Spurned lover, abandoned wife, author and adventurer, Theresa Longworth is the subject of this engrossing first work by historian Chloë Schama (daughter, in case you wondered, of Simon). After a chance encounter on a channel steamer, the teenaged Theresa embarked upon a torrid epistolatory romance with Charles Yelverton, the future Viscount Avonmore, a "chivalrous savage" who was to prove her ruin. Kept apart by circumstance, they pursued their affair across Europe, through the Crimean war, finally marrying in secret .

When news of Yelverton's union with a wealthy widow reached Theresa she was devastated, but vowed to vindicate herself in the courts. At trial in Dublin, Edinburgh and finally London, the case became a cause celebre: titillating sensation-seeking crowds, the principal actors cast as crude archetypes of womanly virtue and male villainy.

"I can have no half measures, and come weal or woe I am prepared to meet it and will make the best of it,"' Theresa wrote. Her claim ultimately defeated, her reputation destroyed, she recast herself as "Teresina Peregrina", joining the generation of "travelling women" blazing trails around the globe.

Schama is a good storyteller, and sets an exhilarating tempo for what proves to be both a fascinating character study and an astute anatomisation of female experience in the age of empire. Her account is spiced with extracts from Theresa's writings, which reveal a character at once endearing, impulsive and gauche. Schama's heroine found adventure and intrigue, but the love she sought eluded her.